Overview

Photoshop, the large robust graphics software package that comes as part of Adobe’s Creative Suite, helps a range of professionals in the fields of photography, art and graphic design, plus novice tinkerers, to enhance and edit their pictures. Through a variety of tools, palettes and filters, Photoshop allows you to add special effects to your work, often with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Frames

Most desktop publishers or word processing users are familiar with the process of putting a frame, or border, around a picture or text box. Photoshop’s special effects make the act of framing something much more intricate and changeable. In Photoshop, you can do more than just put a square frame around a picture; you can choose a single object, such as a person or flower, and frame the object itself. Frames need not be squares or rectangles in Photoshop. You can draw a line around something with curves and angles, and the frame will stick to it, highlighting just that item. Frames can be varied for weight (number of pixels) and color. Photoshop’s “Drop Shadow” element lets you frame something from behind so it appears three dimensional, as if rising off the page.

Neon Glow

Whether you’ve taken a picture of a sign in Las Vegas or just want your skyline or image to look like it, the “Neon Glow” stylistic filter can enhance your photo. Through the tool, slide three different effects bars to change the thickness of the neon lines and their brightness, which is then applied to your image. Anything that was even the faintest line or outline is made bright and glowing while the rest of the picture fades back into a dark or black background. The “Neon Glow” filter works on anything from an up-close headshot to a landscape image.

Wet Edges

Along with a variety of tools to simulate graffiti and airbrushing paint styles, Photoshop’s “Wet Edges” functionality enables you to make your paint lines partially see-through, allowing the texture of what you painted below it, or the photo you painted on top of, to show through. This isn’t the same as picking a light colored paint, which would still be opaque. The “Wet Edges” special effect works to add to the dimension of what you’ve added to the drawing or photo; it works in conjunction with Photoshop’s “Paintbrush” tool, allowing background to peek through, such as a brick wall, cloudy sky or a person’s skin.

References

About the Author

Fionia LeChat is a technical writer whose major skill sets include the MS Office Suite (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Publisher), Photoshop, Paint, desktop publishing, design and graphics. LeChat has a Master of Science in technical writing, a Master of Arts in public relations and communications and a Bachelor of Arts in writing/English.